Uk politics

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Breaking: Economy grew by 0.8 per cent in Q3

As ministers had hoped, today’s first estimate of GDP figures from the Office for National Statistics shows that the economy grew by 0.8 per cent in the third quarter of 2013. Citi had predicted 0.7  per cent, and while the economy is still 2.5  per cent below its pre-recession peak, ministers now have evidence of an upward trajectory, or, as the Treasury is describing it this morning, ‘real momentum’. The Tories will use this now to argue that Labour has got it wrong on everything, while Labour sticks to its line of welcoming the growth but pointing out all the other bad things. The sight of Ed Balls rather sourly remarking

Isabel Hardman

Three Tory whipping operations prepare for HS2 revolt

Critics of HS2 are scenting blood on all sides now. As the Sun reports, giving Ed Balls the final say on the project is another sign that the Labour party is at least constructing a coffin for the project, even if it isn’t driving the nails in just yet. Meanwhile, on the Tory side, I understand that there are three whipping operations springing up around the report stage and third reading of the preparation bill next week. The PM’s backbench envoy John Hayes and his PPS Mel Stride are the most active from the government side, even though Hayes is not a whip. One Tory MP observing these things tells

Thursday

James Forsyth

The ‘gangbusters’ economy

Tomorrow’s GDP figures are expected to show that the economy is no longer bouncing along the bottom but is now in steady recovery with a second successive quarter of robust growth. It is all very different from the start of the year when the country appeared to be on the verge of a triple dip recession. As I say in this week’s magazine, when in early February the Chancellor’s chief economic adviser Rupert Harrison told a crunch Downing Street meeting that the economy would be going ‘gangbusters’ by late summer, early autumn, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff Ed Llewellyn was so taken aback by the confidence of the prediction

Sebastian Payne

The HS2 fight back begins next week. But will it work?

Ministers are increasingly aware of an uphill struggle on HS2. Next week, they will try to make the case for the line again, in the face of increasing opposition, with the publication of the Department of Transport’s strategic case paper, which will respond to criticisms from the Public Accounts Committee and National Audit Office on the viability of the project. Giving up on trying to win the economic case for HS2 (which has been widely lambasted), the government hopes to turn the tide by instead focusing on the capacity arguments. As James reported last month, the DfT will attempt to shift the HS2 debate to why we need a new

Isabel Hardman

MPs still fracked with nerves about shale gas incentives

In the days before Ed Miliband went all Marxist/brave on energy (delete as tribally appropriate), the debate around energy was more about fracking than it was about freezes. Shale gas has taken a back seat while ministers wonder what on earth they can do about bills to take the wind out of the Labour leader’s sails. But the political problems haven’t gone away. The debate is still about whether the incentives on offer are enough for local communities to accept fracking pads in their area. MPs whose constituencies sit atop the Bowland Shale don’t think the government is offering enough, and have continued to tell the Prime Minister that. He

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Cameron’s 30-minute warning to the Lib Dems on energy bills

The Lib Dems are cross this afternoon about David Cameron’s PMQs announcements on cutting back on green taxes in energy bills. They are mainly cross because they were only given 30 minutes’ notice of the new policy before MPs crowded into the Chamber for the session, and are insisting that ‘nothing concrete has been agreed’. A source close to Nick Clegg told Coffee House; ‘Generally you would hope that an announcement of government policy would not be handled in this way. There was a quad discussion about this but nothing detailed was put forward and nothing concrete has been agreed.’ The source dismissed briefings from Tory sources that ‘one way

Isabel Hardman

Why Mike Penning can afford to be so aggressive about the benefit cap

What a combative interviewee Mike Penning made on the Today programme. The new work and pensions minister clearly felt that given the benefit cap is the most popular policy pollsters have touched in a long while (73% support the cap in principle), he could take the presenters and the Chartered Institute of Housing, which criticises the policy in a report today, to task in the most direct way possible. ‘I’m really disappointed,’ he said, adding that the work was ‘fundamentally flawed’ and scolding the BBC for even reporting it: ‘I’m really disappointed with the work that’s been done there because it’s fundamentally flawed, and actually disappointed again with the BBC’s

James Forsyth

Cameron ‘lost’ PMQs, but he’s moving into a better position on energy bills

David Cameron took a pasting at PMQs today. Ed Miliband, armed with a whole slew of lines from John Major’s speech yesterday, deftly mocked the Prime Minister. Cameron, faced by a Labour wall of noise, struggled to make his replies heard. At one point, he rose to his feet thinking Miliband had finished, only for the Labour leader to contemptuously signal at him to sit down. listen to ‘PMQs: Cameron v s Miliband on energy prices’ on Audioboo But Cameron did announce some policies today that might offer him a way out of the energy hole he’s currently in. First, he made clear that he wants to scale back the

Isabel Hardman

PMQs silence on Grangemouth benefits SNP

Ed Davey is currently answering an urgent question in the Commons on the Grangemouth petrochemical plant. He urged Ineos and Unite to return to talks, describing the failure of the negotiations as ‘regrettable’. As the questions from backbenchers to Davey continue, it’s worth noting that there wasn’t a single mention of the plant at Prime Minister’s Questions, even though the closure of that plant will lead to around 800 people losing their jobs. Ineos estimates that around 10,000 jobs rely indirectly on the factory. The SNP have already picked up on this silence, and can quite easily argue that it shows that Westminster doesn’t care about jobs in Scotland. Even

Isabel Hardman

Sir John Major and the Number 10 vacuum

When Ed Miliband announced his eye-catching energy policy, Tory MPs hoped that their party would respond in kind with something similarly interesting to voters but that would really work. They hoped this would underline that the Conservative party is the party of government, while Miliband was only suitable for opposition. George Osborne’s conference fuel duty freeze and his noises about green taxes and levies on fuel bills reassured many of them, but Sir John Major’s intervention yesterday has highlighted the vacuum caused by a refusal by Number 10 to engage with what one strategist described to me as ‘the footling little things’. One MP said after Major’s speech: ‘Number 10

Tuesday

Steerpike

Coffee Shots: Boris imitates Dave

Is Boris trying to imitate David Cameron? The Mayor of London usually likes to leave the Prime Minister wriggling awkwardly by stealing any show going, but today Boris seemed to be taking a leaf out of his rival’s book. Both men have recently fessed up to needing glasses, and at his select committee appearance today, the Mayor seemed to be emulating Cameron by awkwardly taking his new eyewear on and off throughout the session.

The Spectator

Transcript: John Major calls for an emergency tax on energy companies

Sir John Major told a Westminster lunch this afternoon that the government should impose an emergency tax upon the energy companies to help families keep warm this winter. Here is a transcript of what the former Conservative Prime Minister said: I think when Ed Miliband made his suggestions about energy some weeks ago, I think his heart was in the right place but his head had gone walkabout. But he did touch on an issue that’s very important. The private sector is something the Conservative party supports, but when the private sector goes wrong, or behaves badly, I think it’s entirely right to make changes and put it right. Governments

Isabel Hardman

In areas of weakness, Labour can only complain that the government isn’t tough enough

Much of the coverage of today’s Immigration Bill has centred around those controversial ‘go home’ vans, now ditched because they only sent one person home. Theresa May told the Commons this afternoon that ‘we won’t be rolling out the vans, they were too much of a blunt instrument’. In response to a question from Keith Vaz, she said: ‘What I said to the right honourable gentleman is I didn’t have a flash of blinding light one day and walk into the Home Office and say, I know, why don’t we do this?’ What I have done is looked at the interim evaluation in relation to the vans. There were some

Sebastian Payne

Finally, an end to health tourism in Britain?

‘When this paper reported a senior surgeon’s warning that health tourism could be costing the NHS “billions”‘, begins today’s leader in the Daily Mail on the government’s efforts to clamp down on treating foreign nationals. That’s one (rather cheeky) way of putting it. Another way is ‘When this newspaper reported a piece that appeared in The Spectator and made it a cover’. For our subscribers, it was that familiar feeling of déjà lu — when you read in the newspapers something you first saw in our pages. But the problem of NHS tourism, which Prof J Meirion Thomas exposed, is at last being addressed. Dr Thomas’ original Spectator article appeared in

Isabel Hardman

‘Now we’re relevant’: Lib Dems see free schools row as ‘win’

The Lib Dems are coming in for a beating this morning from the Tories over Nick Clegg’s decision to go public with his thoughts on the flaws and limitations of the free schools programme. Rachel Sylvester and James Chapman both have very strong briefings from Conservative sources about the Deputy Prime Minister’s comments, while the Lib Dems are annoyed both that there is such a fuss about a new plank in the differentiation strategy and also that they have apparently held this policy for a long time. Sources close to Clegg are highlighting that the Lib Dem spring conference backed a motion supported by the leadership which called for all

Isabel Hardman

Sacked minister suggests making government messier – and better

After every reshuffle, sacked ministers choose to tread a number of different paths. Some go rogue, either to the extent that Tim Loughton has since losing his job last year, or at least in publicly criticising their party’s policy, as Jeremy Browne has since being sacked in this year’s round. Others go to ground, receive appreciative applause in the Chamber when they ask very anodyne questions about the local incinerator in their constituency, but don’t bother their former bosses. And a very small number decide to offer some quiet thoughts on how things might be better. Sacked housing minister Mark Prisk seems to have gone down the third route. I

Monday

Steerpike

David Cameron resigns…according to Wales Online

It has been an eventful afternoon at the Western Mail and South Wales Echo. As seen in the screen grab above, Wales Online, the papers’ online variant, reported (and tweeted) that the Prime Minister resigned at 16:33 today. It was a ‘shock’ resignation and the government was ‘rocked’ by the news, apparently. As you’d expect for such breaking news, the piece quickly garnered traffic from Facebook and Twitter. But, Cameroons will be relieved to hear, it was only a test: Apologies to anyone who saw that unfortunately published article just now – a training exercise never intended to see the light of day. — Wales Online (@WalesOnline) October 21, 2013

Isabel Hardman

Andrew Mitchell: A strange apology

Over the past thirteen months since the ‘plebgate’ row broke over Andrew Mitchell and subsequently broke the then chief whip’s career, a number of pieces entitled or themed ‘Andrew Mitchell: An apology’ have appeared here and there as more has come to light about the allegations levelled at Mitchell. In most cases the writers accept that an initial op-ed or blog that they penned about his alleged behaviour wasn’t, with the benefit of hindsight and more information, correct. None have been quite so striking as the statement released this afternoon by the three Police Federation officers who met Mitchell after the allegations surfaced. Here is the statement from Inspector Ken

James Forsyth

Boris’s immigration issue

When you discuss Boris Johnson’s leadership prospects with Tory MPs, one subject nearly always comes up: immigration. The Mayor is a liberal on the subject while most of the party takes a far more sceptical view. Tory MPs wonder how he’ll explain to the electorate why he once backed an amnesty for illegal immigrants. But Boris’s Telegraph column today shows how he can make a better — and more demotic — case for immigration than any other politician. He is prepared to tackle the subject and, what he calls, ‘this sense of indigenous injustice’ head-on. He’s also surely right that the solution to ever-rising house prices in London is to build

Isabel Hardman

Lib Dem free school confusion undermines Clegg’s ‘sausage machine’ model

What does everyone think about free schools? That’s the question that is being asked of every Liberal Democrat who has the misfortune to pop up in broadcast interviews today, because it seems that you can now take any position you want on the subject, so long as you’re wearing a certain hat or you’ve got your fingers crossed behind your back. Ed Davey this morning tried to explain the difference between what David Laws said last week at the despatch box in defence of free schools and what David Laws apparently thinks when he’s not at the despatch box. Davey told the Today programme: ‘He is defending the Government’s position